Like any true-blue American, I don't really concern myself with religion much — literally, but that's another post — until it starts insinuating itself into politics and public policy.  That's when I start to get downright obstinate and feisty.  One thing I have observed over the years: being a Christianist zealot politician is like having jazz chops.  You've either got it or you don't.  Someone needs to tell Nancy Pelosi that she don't got it.

“Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, arguing for the bill’s passage. “And that is the embryonic stem cell research.”

Personally, I'd rather see my Democratic leaders putting forward this theme:

 

 

 

 

 

 

But seriously, when Pelosi and other democrats try to ape the religious right in order to “triangulate” with the vast middle, they just make themselves look like insincere whores.  And besides, I think that — as ususal — most of the strategists who are urging their candidates to do this vastly underestimate the level of the backlash going on against the Christianist right, even among non-secularists.  Everyone is tired of these hand-clapping, if-you-beleive-hard-enough-it-will-be-true idiots.  Message to strategists: Doing what makes the other side successful is NOT automatically the right thing.  Sometimes you have to do the OPPOSITE thing really well.